


A Curtain of Energy, a Sort of Shifting

by Zabbers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-22
Updated: 2010-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-03 02:34:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14558970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: Two friends, each on one side of the crack, too frightened or ashamed or distracted to see.





	1. A Crack in the Skin of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> Written April-May 2010; a once-compliant take on the cracks in time (and a regeneration that never was).

It's on the other side, too, the crack in the skin of the universe.

There, as on this side, they are too busy to notice it.

But can you see it? Look! There, in that corner. Beneath your line of sight. Hidden in the rubble, pretending to be a break in a cornerstone. Did you see?

And another way it is like the crack on this side: it moves. Now it is tucked away amongst the folds of a great man's robes. Now, inscribed, ephemeral, in flame and smoke. Now, a sharp edge in the shell of the glass dome, a crack that spreads to meet the larger wound shattered out of the protective sphere by more conventional means.

It's following someone.

He's dying.

It's a war, and he's come home to finish it. He's come home, and he's going to use the last force of his life to defeat his own people, to ruin their final plan. In this war, as in his life, there is no victory; there are no victors.

He's paying them back for that, his people. For his life's misery.

He's also saving his friend, so he thinks. His friend, who has seen the split in the skin of the world, and refused to believe in it.

_Two parts of space and time that should never have touched, pressed together._ All across two universes. The wider, still living one, and the narrow hell of the dying Time Lords.

Two friends, each on one side of the crack, too frightened or ashamed or distracted to see.

The Doctor and the Master.

They think they have healed reality, but sending Gallifrey back has left a fault, with one on either side. To stitch it together, one must take a leap, and join the other. But the Master is dying, and the Doctor has only just died. Energy leaks from them like blood; time flows irretrievably. In the fire of the perpetual last day, the Master uses himself up, and falls.

There is a light, familiar as skin, and an exhalation.

Like the Doctor, the Master is made anew. He opens grey eyes, looks around--and there is the wound in space and time, a fracture like his very being, and he reaches out, and traces his fingers over the jagged line, feels the cool, wet air blowing through a bulkhead he knows is solid.

This is important. He knows it is.

Above him, Time Lords run amok, the Council has descended into anarchy, and screams fly as frequently as accusations. Statesmen, thousands of years old, struggle hand to hand with one another as their fear blows into the vacuum left by Rassilon's defeat.

The Master crawls on his belly, reaches for a tool he hopes still works, runs it over the world's fracture. The tiny crack comes apart, spilling light into his eyes.

He blinks it away, momentarily blinded, peering through to the other side. A young man in a bow-tie and a tall girl with ginger hair are looking back at him in astonishment.

"Hullo?" he calls through the crack. He wonders where and when it is. It looks quiet there, snow drifting slowly to earth and not mixing with rising ash.

The young man frowns. Recognition blossoms in the Master's consciousness. The young man leans in to the widened fissure, which must be much larger on his side. He too, looks uncertain, as though he knows...but doesn't want to know.

"Hullo," he says, as tentative as he ever gets. "What's this then?"


	2. A Split in the Skin of the World

The fracture collapses, leaving a bank of snow with an ordinary line in it where the ice crystals fall away. It's a strange and jagged shape where the crack used to be, but it's just snow. Snow, and the absence of snow.

The Doctor stands before this afterimage with a silent and sober regard, and then he turns abruptly and strides away, leaving Amy to hurry after him.

"Wait!" she says, reaching him quickly and moving around to cut him off. "Wait. Doctor, that was important. That thing that just happened, that was important. That was a crack in the skin of the universe, like the one in my wall. Exactly like the one in my wall--"

The Doctor has begun to walk again, sidestepping Amy. She keeps up with him because she's not finished. The footprints they leave circle one another, like a diagram describing a dance. "-- _which you closed_. Which had somebody on the other side, who almost destroyed the world. The world! The whole Earth!"

She plants herself in front of him again. "But _this_ crack we didn't even notice. _This crack_..."

She pauses. The Doctor has stopped trying to get away, but he's looking at her with that expression, the woebegone, why-are-you-asking-me-to-talk-about-this expression. Usually he likes it when she asks questions. Not about this, whatever this is.

"It was the man on the other side, wasn't it? He opened and closed it, just like you did. And" --it's there, just on the edge of comprehension, and her voice goes slow with thought-- "he knows you."

For a moment, she thinks he isn't going to answer after all, and that he is going to resume walking away, definitively this time. But then, with that exhilarating suddenness of his, he pivots and heads back towards the bank of snow.

He eyes the crack askance, as though he doesn't want to confront it straight on. She can understand that; it's like the Cheshire cat's grin, turned cruel, and it makes Amy feel like a mouse that knows it's about to be toyed with.

"Yes," the Doctor says at last, "that man opened the crack. Yes, that man knows me. And...I know him. Or at least I _think_ I do! A Time Lord always knows, but it's the end of the universe--he's fond of that, the end of the universe--the rules don't apply, not in the same way; everything is twisted and you can't be sure of what you're sure of. But it was him! I know that in here" --he taps his hearts-- "and I'd bet my screwdriver on knowing it, even at the end of time itself. Which this is."

"This is the end of time itself?" Amy's alarm is like a surge of adrenaline, but lately it's been different. It's fear, yes, but also anticipation. Excitement.

"Well. Which _that_ is." He jabs his finger at the line in the snow, pointing out its jagged curve. "If it gets out here. As long as that world stays where it is, and we stay where we are, we're fine."

He goes quiet and still. He stares at the split in the skin of the world as though he could still see through it to the other side. "That's the end of the world, too, Amelia. The whole world. And I did it. I locked him up in it forever on the day of its destruction. And we're fine."

Something helpless and angry washes over his face, and with startling fierceness he kicks at the mute white wall. It shudders, and what snow doesn't dislodge itself the Doctor knocks out of place with violent swipes of his hands, obliterating the mocking smile. All the while, he's yelling. "Yes, we're fine! We're all fine! Everyone is just fine living out the rest of their oblivious lives out in the oblivious universe while you--!

"--while you burn." The Doctor stands heaving in breaths, which is strange because he's never out of breath. He seems deflated, almost sullen. The snow is really just snow now; not even a reminder remains of the flash of light and the pale, intense eyes, and the gentle, cold voice. The top layer of loose powder is all on the ground, leaving a blank wall of ice slanted imperceptibly away.

The Doctor leans in to it, his fingers gentle after all that against the spot where two worlds touched, so briefly. Then he eases back, exhaling. Slipping his hands into his pockets, once again he turns away to go.

"Come on, Amy," he says. "This crack is closed now. These worlds are sealed. There's nothing left here."


	3. What If Time Could Run Out?

Except it isn't. Except there is.

It's the end of the world, but the Master is alive, and he's the last person to let something as trivial as a time lock and the potential destruction of all reality if he breaches it get in his way. In this body, forged in the energies of his home, he feels strong, calm, clear-headed.

It's a foreign, long-forgotten sensation.

All around him, chaos and confusion, as though the sane has become the mad, madness, sanity. What would you do if you knew it was your last day of existence? How would you behave if you knew it was your species' final hours, the tantalisingly close hope of a reprieve ripped away once again?

The Master knows his answer: _survive_.

And more than survive. Find a way out. Not for his people; it's far too late for that, given the choices they've made, and the time that's left. Even he isn't so clever. And nor does he care to find it. The awareness of what they have done to him is still too raw. Striking down Rassilon wasn't nearly enough of a balm to that wound. Betrayal stays with you; the Master should know.

So it's simple. So he's ready.

It's important that he goes unnoticed as he sneaks out of the Panopticon, but in this climate of panic going unnoticed is apparently not a problem, even for an infamous Time Lord wearing a new face and decaying, too-tight alien clothes. Breaking into Rassilon's chambers is also simple, with the great man dead, and his guards scattered. His lock box requires more finesse, but then, the Master is good with technology, and a lock is only a computer with a singular purpose.

He collects the objects he requires, and then all that is left is to find somewhere private to wait out the cracks. Already, he's seen them on another half a dozen surfaces, reassuring him that they are not only fracturing the Panopticon, but the entire world.

It only requires that one large enough appears, opening onto a planet he can use. He keeps to shadows and corners, hugging the walls, avoiding the Chancellory guards who run about in complete and idiotic confusion, and steps sideways at last into a meditation garden. It's a small square tucked away from the main thoroughfare by an offset just large enough to create a tasteful oasis. Screened from the unaccustomed hubbub of the city visually by plantings and aurally by a water feature, it's like a time slide to their past, when the duty of a Time Lord was to watch and to contemplate and remember. It's so still it's as though time flows around it, not through.

The Master traverses the inscription set in the floor, a circle of darker stone, and sits on a pollen-strewn bench, suddenly feeling the pounding of his hearts, not quite in rhythm. There is an unstable power in him still, but it has nowhere to go, and this is not the time. He wills it into a corner of himself, coaxes it into a tight golden ball. Later. Later, he can allow this new body what it needs.

For now...he concentrates on breathing, and on sitting up through the dizzy wave that passes through him. He forces himself to focus on the details of the garden. On the exquisite, out of place stillness of it; on the quiet, almost a silence.

The blossoms are heavy with pollen and petals, an entire wall of Memento Mori flowers hanging golden and freckled in the artificial sunslight. By the fountain, a small but luxuriant swathe of blood-red grass traces a soft and shaggy semi-circle, allowed to grow long and whispering of endless meadows. An elegant, silver tree weeps over the water, dipping into its own reflection. The garden smells ripe, heady, ready to dissolve into late summer's dream of fruit and heat.

After a moment, the Master begins to wonder if he's losing his mind again, seduced by a garden. He stands abruptly, walking away in agitation, but then turns back to the wall, reaches to pull a flower from its vine.

Beneath the lattice of vegetation, a jagged line, large enough to swallow a man, jeers out at him as though through a veil.

It's now.

The Master hesitates. This is, undeniably, his Gallifrey; the air, even while acrid, the gravity, the quality of the light--these are things to which his senses are forever attuned, and which activate in him, with the merest effortless echo, overwhelmingly vivid sensations of home, childhood, safety. It's a biological thing, inescapable.

He will never experience that connection again. This is Gallifrey, lost Gallifrey, and although his exile has lasted lifetimes, this planet...without it, he has only one external point of reference left, and that one he can't trust to stay still.

He _must_ chase it. The imperative is strong enough to override any uncharacteristic sentimentalism for a cause already beyond his power to repair. Somewhere, on the other side, is the Doctor, in a new body. Having caught a glimpse, he's certain that what he must do, once survival is assured, is to find him.

Standing back, and with resolved determination, the Master opens the fissure into space and time. He looks through it to see that the world beyond is good, and steps through, for the second time leaving his planet and his people to burn and die.

Behind him, as the portal closes, yellow flowers litter the ornate flagstone.


End file.
